2014 Dem throwdown: Khanna challenges Honda to series of debates

In a 2014 House race that’s already one of the country’s most competitive, Silicon Valley Democrat Ro Khanna has made a move to ramp it up: he’s issued fellow Democrat and 7-term incumbent Mike Honda a challenge to compete in at least four debates before the June primary.

Khanna’s team, in a press release issued today, said his campaign has already heard interest from several leading media outlets interested in a role in such CD-17 face-offs. Those outlets include the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, KPIX 5, NBC Bay Area, the Huffington Post and TechCrunch, the campaign said.

Khanna, in a statement, said that a debate schedule “will allow voters to make a fully informed decision about who will best represent them in Congress.”

“Voters are tired of old-style politics and campaigns that consist of little more than sloganeering and demagoguery,” Khanna said. “With the challenges our nation faces today, the voters deserve better.”

In what sounds like a veiled swipe at the incumbent, Khanna adds that the debates are “one way to start restoring public confidence in Congress, which is at an all-time low.”

So he’s offering to debate Honda on weekends and during House breaks “to accommodate the incumbent’s schedule,” and says he’ll designate a volunteer to start exploring “dates, venues and formats” for the 2014 primary debates.

We’ll be seeking out official comment from Honda’s campaign today, and update here.

But expect the answer to be something like: not so fast.

Challengers like Khanna, the former Obama trade representative, are naturally eager to debate early and often. They’ve got far less name recognition among voters and they can only benefit from the exposure of standing toe-to-toe with an incumbent.

But political veterans like Honda know that debates pose all kinds of pitfalls: there are years of voting records, statements and interviews in the public eye that can be picked apart.

Still, incumbents have enormous control over debates — and sometimes get away with none at all.

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, in 2012, managed that trick — despite editorials that urged her to reconsider. The Democratic Senator entirely ignored the entreaties to debate GOP candidate Elizabeth Emken, blithely dismissing her challenger as an unknown and untested candidate.

Honda will have a far tougher time ignoring Khanna.

The Democratic attorney and author has been a fundraising machine in Silicon Valley, and at last count had a 4-1 cash on hand advantage over the incumbent.

Khanna, the son of Indian immigrants, has big support from the South Asian community in a district with one of the nation’s largest concentrations of Indian-Americans. And he has also lined up endorsements including Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, Mayor Orrin Mahoney of Cupertino, Mayor Jose Esteves of Milpitas, and dozens of tech stars in Silicon Valley including Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer and Marc Andreessen.

But Honda has his own impressive lineup of star endorsers, including President Obama and just about all the Democratic elected establishment, as well as many key labor leaders and progressive icons like Howard Dean. And he’s an icon in the Asian Pacific Islander community.

Still, given the national interest in this race — and the issues at stake in tech and Silicon Valley — lots of folks, and not just in California, will be eager to see a Honda v. Khanna throwdown.